The dynamics of food, alcohol and cigarette consumption in Russia during transition

Abstract

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Food consumption and diet quality choices of Roma in Romania: a counterfactual analysis

“…Overall, the estimated statistically significant impact of explanatory variables on the diet diversity gap between Roma and non-Roma is in agreement with the general literature which argues that socio-economic factors affect diet quality of households (e.g., Alaimo et al 1998;Himmelgreen et al 2000;Arimond and Ruel 2004;Darmon and Drewnowski 2008;Herzfeld et al 2014;Codjoe et al 2016) and more specifically confirms previous findings that lower diet quality of disadvantaged ethnic groups is associated, among other factors, with lower income level, adverse employment opportunities (i.e. lower share of salaried income, lower labour market participation) and lower participation in social assistance programs (e.g., Alaimo et al 1998;Himmelgreen et al 2000).…”

“…Similarly, SI and EI, which are also theoretically derived, are commonly used indicators for measuring diet diversity in the literature on consumer behaviour in respect of food (e.g., Theil and Finke 1983;Thiele and Weiss 2003;Herzfeld et al 2014). The Simpson Index, also known as Berry Index, is calculated as SI ¼ 1−∑w 2 i , where w i is the budget share of the i-th (disaggregated) food item in the total food expenditure (basket).…”

“…Following previous studies on diet diversity (Jackson 1984;Lee and Brown 1989;Thiele and Weiss 2003;Herzfeld et al 2014) we specify a demand for a diet diversity equation which is based on a standard (ordinary) demand formulation. To account for income level and food prices faced by households, we considered total household monthly income (income), and the amount paid per unit of food item (food_price).…”

“…We focus on the diet quality aspect of food security of Roma and reveal possible cultural (institutional) and economic (marginalisation) forces determining their choices of diet. In the nutrition economics literature (e.g., Fernandez et al 1996;Hatloy et al 1998;Arimond and Ruel 2004;Kant 2004;Matz et al 2015) and food economics literature (e.g., Theil and Finke 1983;Jackson 1984;Thiele and Weiss 2003;Herzfeld et al 2014;Braha et al 2017) diet diversity is commonly employed as a proxy for diet quality. 2 It is established that consumption of a diverse diet has a positive impact on health and that diet diversity is a good indicator of food security at the household level.…”

Economic crisis and the unemployment effect on household food expenditure: The case of Spain

“…Dave and Kelly (2012) confirmed this relationship for US adults, finding a relationship between unemployment status and reduced consumption of healthy foods like fruit and vegetables. Herzfeld et al (2014) also reported the consumption of a less diversified diet by Russian households in regions with high unemployment rates.…”